I think we can agree that RMS can be childish. I was in the room when he broke into the room yelling at OSCON's Openoffice announcement. That's the way he is.

Even though I don't and never will agree with him 100% (that's worship) I am happy he's there, especially when there are thousands of people on the other side in IT yelling through coporate bullhorns constantly. His big mouth is a counterweight. If the braindead microsoft zombies that control IT in corporate america have heard of anyone's views it is probably his. I am not sure if Ubuntu is trying to become yet another Open Source company that is canibalized and eaten from inside by today's vile corporate belief system, but at least RMS let us know it COULD happen...

Ubuntu is ultimately there for Canonical's profit. We thought we could work with folks like that, but obviously we were too optimistic. The goals of the Free Software community are important, and will only be achieved if people like you devote your free time to making the non-profits work as the direct path to users.

I think overall for-profit companies have made a huge contribution to the Free Software community. While Canonical has probably contributed less than many others, I still still their total contribution as positive. Of course I still disagree when their new Ubuntu spyware and even before that I had already decided to stop using it for unrelated reasons (Unity and other interface-related decisions). In any community, there will be individuals and companies that do the wrong thing and I don't see anything spec

Do you get paid Mr Perens? if so I'd say you're being a bit of a hypocrite, as the company that pays you isn't just handing you money because you smell nice ya know, its because they intend to profit from your labor. Without looking up what you've been up to lately I'll take a wild guess and say you or your employer is following one of the 3 "pre-approved" methods listed below, yes? which if correct proves what I've been saying for years, that Linux has no place on a desktop since desktops don't fit into one of the 3 "blessed" business models.

Mark Shuttleworth invested millions into canonical and like anybody else who invests a large sum he would at least like to break even, and considering the fact that Linux was virtually unknown outside the server room before Canonical came along and started polishing it up and trying to fix the "Its too complicated" image problem i'd say at the very least he deserves to make a few bucks.

But all of this ranting and hatred directed at Canonical has proven ONE thing, it has proven that what the corps said were correct and GPL should be avoided like an STD unless you are a non profit or intending to survive with one of the "pre-approved" FOSS methods of which there are only 3, software contracts, selling hardware, and tin cup begging. After all Jobs used BSD and built an empire, Shuttleworth used Linux and is getting spat upon for trying to keep the lights on. if I were a new business starting out i know what lesson I'd take away from that, that I wouldn't allow a single line of code written for me or used by me be GPL, period.

Windows is ultimately there for Microsoft's profit, and yet there are a lot of people who put time and effort into building communities for both developers and users on Windows without being employed by Microsoft. These people would, quite rightly, be offended if you said they were just doing it to improve Microsoft's profits- they're there to help others, share their knowledge, talk with others who have similar interests, and other similar personal goals.

It's still true though that Windows is ultimately there for Microsoft's profit.

The non-profits they invest are those which directly benefit themselves. These are the people who're writing the code which Canonical are going to be marketing, is it too surprising that they're throwing them some money? It's practical in that they can't afford for Linux to fall behind Windows or OS X, and they also want to keep community feeling onside as they don't want to lose support from those who recommend their distro.

I'm not saying I dislike Canonical, I am saying they are a business. Without that they probably wouldn't have achieved what they have, a few people with great intentions can't achieve as much as a few people with great intentions and the money and organisation to back them up with. That money has to come from somewhere too, it doesn't just magically appear, but deals like this- especially when give spin this poor- are likely to cost too much goodwill from their audience to make them worthwhile.

Way to piss on all the people who aren't Canonical employees that devote a lot of time and effort to making Ubuntu a successful and welcoming community of users and developers.

As I said in my Linux.conf.au keynote, using your spare time to make Mark Shuttleworth richer isn't smart. We have a lot of real community projects, meaning operated by the community and entirely for the public benefit, where the present Ubuntu volunteers could better spend their time.

Regarding the money, IMO it's not worth the negative part. And let's not forget that Ubuntu is essentially built by projects like GNOME and LibreOffice, and Debian. Should I be overjoyed by the little portion of what they make that they return to those projects?

Exactly, indeed. Calling someone names is not an argument. (Nor is it all that unchildish.)

It's also flat-out false to say RMS is spreading fear, uncertainty, or doubt. Nowhere does he dangle dark but unnamed consequences for using Ubuntu. And there's no uncertainty or doubt whatsoever in his rejection of spyware and therefore of Ubuntu.

Its not a belief thing. He is either wrong or he is not. He has a good track record of being proved right, given time.

"over-the-top rhetoric"

He has in fact given the tools and a legal framework to operate under to enable exactly that, freedom from propriety software.

This importance of software freedom could be the key to preserving the other freedomds you mention, without it the others fall.

It would seem that the "sell outs" always attack the messenger. The movement is just fine whilst the foundations of its formation remain strong and are actively defended. Changing it into something else to achieve growth hardly helps the original organisation grow now does it.

You sound like the established church bashing the messiah. If only he could have been more reasonable, a little less sermonising on the mount and attention seeking, if only he'd just grown up a little. It's just not they way we do things around here.

This importance of software freedom could be the key to preserving the other freedoms you mention, without it the others fall.

Wait. What?

So you're saying, and correct me if I'm wrong here, that if a company like Microsoft is allowed to sell or distribute software without releasing the source code, it will inevitably lead to the disappearance of all other freedoms?

Let's see, did Amazon used the proprietary nature of a DRM system to remove a book ? yes, they did; Do various government wanted to censor information ? Yes they, ( either China, on a lot of point, iran, etc, or USA, for Wikileaks, even if I must add that both cases are complex, and the USAs government has a much better track than China and Iran by several order of magnitude )Did people used copyright to prevent anything ? Yes, they do, see the book of Lessig, explaining how people cannot do their work on the period after the war and the racism because various movies are not in the public domain.

So there is a will to prevent free flow of information ( from mundane topic like song to more serious issues like corruption in China ), coming from various places, that could be enforced and that is enforced by proprietary nature of software,

And sure, with all of that, there is no issue of freedom of speech, who will not be linked to freedom of software. Freedom to innovate, of course, would have been unharmed if Google or Facebook would have been forced to pay license to a competitor for each server they have, and would have been unable to enhance the software. Sure, there is problem of slavery, child labor, woman rights in lots of country. That doesn't mean nothing should be done anywhere until this is solved.

...but his desire to prioritize the "freedom" of systems over those systems actually doing anything useful is totally unreasonable.

I do have to agree there.

While I believe that the computing world would be a better place if all software was Free, Stallman's approach to advocating it does little to move things in that direction. He divides everything into "entirely Free" and "not entirely Free", and everything in the latter category is demonized. A more useful approach would be to advocate mostly Free systems (ie, Free aside from the odd wireless driver or whatnot, such as Ubuntu) over entirely non-Free ones (ie, Windows). As these most

I'll get hate for saying this but fuck it this is how I feel, this is EXACTLY why I can't fucking stand RMS, because in just about every way he IS the classic Internet Troll. There can be NO discussion of an issue, NO moderation, NO exchange of ideas or attempts to meet each other in the middle, he is like the absolute worst of partisan politics concentrated into a giant flaming troll.

In every single rant and every single conversation as far as as RMS is concerned there is only TWO answers, either you agree with every fucking thing he does and says and are therefor "good" or you don't and you are a "sinner" and bad and destroying kittens and kicking puppies. Even the head of Red Hat says "RMS treats his friends like his enemies" because one can NEVER disagree with him, not ever, or you are just a worthless piece of shit destroying the planet.

So just to put my own spin on his totally tasteless rant when Steve Jobs died "I won't be glad when he's dead but I'll be glad when he's gone" because just like dealing with a ranting political hack or Internet troll its ALL "good VS evil" with of course everything good defined by what St iGNUcious believes and everything evil is those that dont kiss the ring and fall in line. So I'd say he is far worse than childish, most people can see childish behavior and dismiss the person for acting like they are four, nope this is MUCH worse, its the classic Faux News HuffPo "You are with me or against me!" divisive bullshit that frankly makes having a civilized conversation all but impossible.

but his desire to prioritize the "freedom" of systems over those systems actually doing anything useful is totally unreasonable.

That's a great theory, but it doesn't agree with actual practice. In practice, freedom is a very important part of doing things that are useful. With proprietary software, you are limited to what the authors' decide to give you. Proprietary software authors routinely leave out important features or include anti-features like spyware because they make more money that way. With free software, the main limit is on what the authors can produce, not on what is in their best interest to provide you.

Software freedom is so much less important than other forms of freedom (freedom from slavery, freedom of speech, freedom of association, etc) in the real world that I can't take his writing seriously.

Where does he suggest that free software is more important than those freedoms? I haven't seen it in any of his writings. And if you're just saying that he should concentrate on other kinds of freedom because software freedom is too low on the scale to be worth the effort, that's a bad argument. Things that are worth having are worth having even if there are other things that are more important. The amount of effort RMS has put into free software would be a drop in the bucket compared to all the effort that's gone into the kinds of basic human rights you mention, but he has produced real and important results for that relatively modest effort. He has almost certainly done more real good by creating a new concept of freedom than he would have by joining an existing cause.

Software freedom is important, and more so than ever, when corporations increasingly sell you computing devices that ostensibly you own, but are not free to do anything you like (within the law, of course), with regard to the software running on them. It's more important than ever in a world where hardware is a commodity and what (and I'm trying to say 'range of possible actions' rather than 'range of scale') a given blob of silicon can do is not dictated so much by hardware limitations but rather the particular instructions that happen to live on the non-volatile memory of the device at a given moment. It's important when it is commonplace that we surrounded by devices with CPUs and memory, but no way to verify the device is programmed to do what we want to do and no more, no less. So I'd say the right to exert control over devices you own via installing whatever software you want, whenever you want, is pretty fundamental.

They said the same thing about every other leader of a movement (take your pick)... If you have issues with his delivery (he's pedantic at times, and his insistence on making sure he is heard on subjects ancillary to FSF are rather annoying), that's fine. But his message makes sense.

Copyright has been perverted to a perpetual "ATM machine" for the copyright cartels, and it is used as a weapon to strike innovation and new ideas down before they can blossom. What the GPL does is use that perversion of copyright against itself so that no matter what happens to the copyright law in the future (and believe me it's getting worse), we will have a way to keep innovation free from hoarding elements of the multinational corporations. It isn't the only license in the world, but by gum it's a pretty good alternative to the closed-source nonsense that passes for "commercial" software. DRM, proprietary formats, invasive and restrictive usage requirements (trying to completely kill Fair Use), and otherwise litigious bastards in the copyright retention business (they aren't the creators) can go eat a bag of dicks. The GPL has prevented them from strangling innovation and the sharing of ideas. Thanks to RMS, who I don't always agree with, for pioneering that.

For me, his positives outweigh his toe-cheese eating negatives. As a person, I'd probably hose him down from 40 feet... but as an idea... RMS has got the chops to put the establishment on notice.

As a person, I'd probably hose him down from 40 feet... but as an idea... RMS has got the chops to put the establishment on notice.

This is what a lot of people on slashdot don't seem to realise. You hear comments about how they like what RMS/Assange/De-Raadt are doing but can't stand that they're huge dicks (not: I do not agree that they are). The thing is that you are never going to find people willing to devote their life to a any cause who are just nice, easy going people. Nice, easy going people are by definition easy going. A cause requires amazing amounts of stubborn determinantion and that makes people seem not very nice because they are intransigent and unwilling to compromise.

But you can't have one without the other.

I would rather have a world with these kind of awkward, singular people and the things they are driven to do than one without.

Though I will also add that in the very brief exchanges I've had with both RMS and De-Raadt, they both seemes like reasonable, thoughtful people, to me.

Software freedom is so much less important than other forms of freedom (freedom from slavery, freedom of speech, freedom of association, etc) in the real world that I can't take his writing seriously.

For our children, Software freedom will be the means to all of those other freedoms. This is not some scifi fantasy anymore. Computers will rule your life in the near future. They practically do now. To have software tools locked in corporate and government chains, will be the same as chaining you.

No, his big mouth is a liability for the open-source community. He is not a passionate but outspoken advocate of a movement; he is a single-minded, uncompromising advocate for his own opinions at the expense of everyone else's. Either you agree with him, or you are wrong.

Have you ever encountered one of the Free Software Foundation's articles about a particular software topic, like copyright or patents or the advantages of free software? Ever notice that, typically, at least 80% of the citations in the article are to other articles by Richard Stallman?Like this one? [fsfe.org] The only opinion Richard Stallman really recognizes as objective or authoritative is his own earlier opinion.

Wrong, his opinion is his opinion, something everyone is entitled to. Somehow there is a mass media driven distortion that one people have sufficient public attention they can be targeted people and their opinions can be forced to change to conform with selected desires of vocal groups. Those vocal groups can be real or just marketing driven illusions.

Certainly Richard Matthew Stallman does challenge most copyright and patent controlled forms of software and would prefer a completely free market. That is

It's not so much a matter of being wrong (although he very often is). It's more the fact that even when he's got a good point, he still can't put together a coherent, well thought out argument and instead just comes across as an extremist nutjob (most likely because that's exactly what he it).

Without corporate involvement, Linux wouldn't be anywhere near what it is today.

OpenOffice and its derivatives (basically the de-facto office suites of linux) itself was born out of corporate interests.

The GPL had the effect (unintended? I don't know as the philosophy of many developers involved in GPL projects seems to vary) of being that the software provides a service, and we don't (necessarily) profit from distributing the software itself, but rather profit from selling the services that it provides, or profit from selling services that provide for its users. Redistributing changes for others to use therefore does not harm your bottom line.

Linux itself was written by Linus Torvalds, not RMS. And as far as I'm aware, other than GCC the majority of corporate distribution of linux to end users doesn't use GNUtils very much (e.g. android, tivo, soho routers, and many others.) Even if they did, they could always just take the BSD implementations which in nearly all cases are every bit as good.

If RMS takes issue with that, he can go promote Hurd (aka Turd) to the world, which has little if any corporate involvement, and likewise is back in the stone age by comparison.

The problem isn't corporate involvement. The problem is when corporate involvement leads down the path we're seeing Canonical take with Ubuntu, where they start shoving ads in your face.

It fundamentally disrespects the user as it becomes apparent that you've given up on making them the customer and decided to sell them like livestock. It's why Facebook is so reviled on Slashdot, and why I can't stand most handset manufacturers (they build for the carriers and not the people who actually use the devices.)

We can avoid using Ubuntu (typing this on Mint currently), and also criticize them publicly to let them know *why* we are leaving. Otherwise they might think its for an entirely different reason, and that might change how they respond (if at all).

the GPL is what made GNU/Linux a community, instead of a forgotten footnote.

the GPL and GPL like licenses are what make the Open Source business model viable, as any potential competition has to share their improvements on your code with you. If it where BSD, you'd have something like OS X, where one company would make a locked down version, and no one else would be able to make their own version, and contributing your code in a community would not be viable, because you'd only help your competition, who'd be under no obligation to help you back.

The GPL actually protects profits of companies.

As for GNU. Its everywhere. Despite being ignored by most consumer goods, its present everywhere on the business side.

RHEL and SLES running GNU, as does zLinux, and the other high end commericial distros.

"If it where BSD, you'd have something like OS X, where one company would make a locked down version, and no one else would be able to make their own version, and contributing your code in a community would not be viable, because you'd only help your competition, who'd be under no obligation to help you back."

Little problem - the bits in OS X that haven't been contributed back are the bits Apple (or NeXt) wrote themselves, like Aqua (which is probably what you're thinking of). The improvements to open sour

Linux owes EVERYTHING to the heart, idealism and intellect of free men choosing to cooperate. Yes, corporations make valuable contributions, but that is because they cannot deny the value of what the free software movement has created. If the corporations had had their way, there never would have been a linux in anything like its present form and spirit, and CERTAINLY nothing remotely like the triumph of Gnu.

Not sure what you are trying to do minimizing Gnu. If all linux owed to Gnu was gcc, then Gnu would

He could have a little class though doing it. Like bursting in and yelling "TROLL! In the dungeon!... Thought you'd want to know," and then collapsing on the floor. Busting in on someone else's announcement and unleashing a string of profanities and ranting isn't classy -- it's how drunk people act. Is that really who we want as the poster child for the open source movement? A guy who looks like he hasn't shaved or showered in ages and acts piss drunk in public?

Standard PR flak technique #137: When confronted by undeniable evidence of wrongdoing, attack the person or organization providing the evidence with accusations that can't be disproven. Words commonly used for this are "extremist", "conspiracy theorist", "silly", or "misguided".

It is so trivial to disable (and remove) this "feature" that bitching about it is almost meaningless and indeed borderlines on childishness.

In reality, it is not much different that an ad-supported application (such as Opera had at one time), except with those, you didn't have the freedom to permanently remove the ad without paying up - which is not the case here.

And of course, no one is forcing anyone to download and install Ubuntu, unless of course you are interested in a fairly easy to install distro tha

In reality, it is not much different that an ad-supported application (such as Opera had at one time), except with those, you didn't have the freedom to permanently remove the ad without paying up - which is not the case here.

No, this is spyware, because it is sending information about user activity to the net in settings where users might not expect it. The closest you get in Opera and the likes is search suggestions, which can send your half-typed URLs to Google, but at least then you pretty much expect the data to end up on the net.

no one is forcing anyone to download and install Ubuntu

Exactly. We are free to tell them to go fuck themselves, and we should. It's not like their users are getting anything in return for this. It's pretty clear that Ubuntu is just going to keep adding abuse upon their users whether it be for monetization or politics. I'd certainly never direct the "less technically savvy" to a distro that keeps fucking up the sound and the user interface.

You should not have to disable anything. On the contrary, this "feature" should be deliberatly enabled by the user. No one is arguing over the triviality of how to disable it. You said it yourself, this is a distribution that works out of the box. It stands to reason that the majority of its users do not understand the issue nor its implications. Therefore it's plausible that they will not be able to recognize the real need to disable this "feature". This put's Ubuntu against the spirit of the entire community within which they've setup shop. No one here is really arguing that Ubuntu should not be free to operate as they see fit to make a profit, however, they are now stepping on the toes of the giants on which they are shouldered. A completely dickhead attitude that isn't going to lend them any credit for the spirit of freedom.

In short, this is a non-issue and RMS is (as expected) over-reacting to something that doesn't fit into his perfect Socialist software society.

You know, RMS has been vindicated so many times, I am frankly surprised there still are people trying to put him down, especially with the kind of labeling ("perfect Socialist software society") that makes you look like a douche.

Couldn't have said it better myself. RMS rocks. Socially awkward? Fuck yes. But on the freakin' money time after time about the fundamental issues? The man has sense, and the courage to outmatch a million critics who want to try to make the issue about his beard or whatever.

It is not a big issue itself, it's a big signal though: those who sell user data without a fricking "I agree" dialog are not very trustworthy. I had already lost Canonical when they decided a 50 meg tomboy app was to stay in an installation cd and gimp had to go.

This is not spreading FUD, this is being in FUD and telling others.

The ease of solving the problem posed by Canonical choices is a BIG advertisement to FOSS philosophy. Ultimately the user is free. Free to hop to another distro without losing docume

Debian isn't too bad, and it's what Ubuntu is based upon, though it's not as "bleeding-edge" while still being stable. Others might suggest Fedora, Arch or Slackware if you want that, and I've heard good things about Sabayon as well, especially in the eye candy department, though it has been a few years.

In all honesty, I keep going back to Debian. My needs aren't too difficult to satisfy, and I can compile something myself if I really need to. I'd recommend using virtual machines to test them first. Why overwrite a perfectly good installation just to find you don't like something?

When Ubuntu decided to poop on their users with Unity, there was an exodus of biblical proportions to Linux Mint. That's why Mint is now the #1 distro.

And thanks to Ubuntu's newest decisions, the Mint userbase is destined to grow even further.

At least according to distrowatch's bogus page hit counter. However, if you look at the number of forum users, forum posts, thrid party support, or any number of other metrics, it is hard to substantiate that Mint is #1. I don't say this to disparage Mint, they do a great job, but #1? hardly.

Richard is an academic. He doesn't live in the real world and it doesn't help that he is probably a little looney. That said, he can be right on a lot of points and even if he's wrong if he opens up a discussion then you can still say he's done his bit.

He doesn't live in the real world and it doesn't help that he is probably a little looney.

That's a bigger problem than most people want to admit. Very often, an open source project doesn't fail because it's technically inferior to other products, but because of ideological differences between developers. Take the *BSD community: It's dying right now because it split off into four major variants due to political in-fighting. The reason why Linux and Apache have succeeded isn't just technical superiority, but because those groups kept political infighting to a managable level. That's the biggest p

Well, that's your point of view.What I see is that the GPL is one of the most used software licenses in the world, and it represents exacly his idea.RMS has had great, awesome partial successes. His philosophy is shared by a lot of people, in practice, and his work has been key to us having real, viable, modern, free software platforms today. Without his work particularly and him been so "political", I don't think we could have gone this far.

Last did anything extraordinary a few thousand years ago, but his followers still keep talking about it as if it was the pinnacle of human development? Erm... check.

I think this is the thing that bugs me more than anything else about RMS and the people who talk about how far Free Software has got us and how dangerous proprietary software is. Those of us who develop proprietary software are bringing many benefits to many people, despite all the potential pitfalls, and amazingly many of our users actually lik

I think that is exactly their problem. As I posted in the other related story here, they seem to be hoping that they can make an OS with an 'oooooh, shiny' factors that makes people drop their principles. Asking their users for money is a much better approach than defaulting to sending search results to Amazon, and I think they'd get more money long term. By all means, have one of the 'lenses' installable so that people can do Amazon searches if they want, but having it as a default is not going to make very many people happy.

Ubuntu is the derivative. The original work - without which Ubuntu wouldn't exist - is still here after 20 years and has never used such underhanded tactics on its users, and it actually has and follow a Social Contract that ensures it.

Ubuntu is a bastard child. It should be lost on no one that the money Mr Shuttleworth has put into it is an investment, not a donation. Yet libre software licensing is not structured primarily to make money, it is structured to promote knowledge, and science. Attempting to monetize Debian (excuse me 'Ubuntu') is like trying to milk a Gorilla. Possible, but not pretty. Or easy. And nearly impossible to do and keep your hands clean.

'Lighten up', you say. But that is the whole point. Most of us do have compromising minds. Yes, I confess, I loaded the Nvidia binary blob. It is easy and natural for me to lighten up. Believe me I can live with myself.

But... If RMS had a compromising mind there would not be a vibrant open source universe, or at least not the one we have. (Although there would no doubt still be some sort of fuzzy academic open computing something.) The day he could not get those specs to write his modified printer driver is the day he saw -- in a flash -- the science of computing being swallowed by business. And boy was he right. He could have cashed in like so many others. Or shrugged it off like I would. But he put his obsessive uncompromising Asbergerish hairy soiled foot down and fought to create an intellectual space for computing that was free from the kind of proprietary sandboxing that hobbles progress in every field (But which makes sh*tloads of money -- Not a bad thing either). Very few people would fight as hard as RMS has to NOT make money. Amazingly many others saw the utility and necessity of what he was doing and joined him. So now, when a lab needs a specialized computing application they don't have to buy it. (They can of course.) They can build it.

RMS is not being childish in regard to Ubuntu's recent play. He is just being RMS. Monetizing open source software by crippling it is like charging for slide rides on a public playground. It's wrong. (Even if you fix and wax the slide.) Buy an empty lot. Build your own slide. Sell all the rides you want.

Doesn't Amazon pay Canonical if people make purchases? (I might be wrong about this -- if I am, please correct me.)

*If* Amazon does pay Canonical, and Bacon doesn't mention that in his post, I kind of feel like Bacon loses the argument. I mean, if they're getting paid, and he's making posts that say, "We're doing this only because we want you to have the best search experience," it seems a little disingenuous.

All the search results open an Amazon webpage with Canonical's Amazon Affiliate Code [amazon.com], which adds a tracking cookie to your session and makes Canonical get back an undisclosed percentage of all your Amazon purchases, as long as that cookie stays there.

All the search results open an Amazon webpage with Canonical's Amazon Affiliate Code [amazon.com], which adds a tracking cookie to your session and makes Canonical get back an undisclosed percentage of all your Amazon purchases, as long as that cookie stays there.

"If you can't get the message get the man" - Mel Gibson from an interview

I like how, in the previous RMS post to Slashdot, people were attacking him, even pointing out some disgusting behavior in the first few posts. It makes me wonder how many shill accounts exist just for this purpose, for Linux and FOSS articles a lot of the time sock puppets are the first to post and are usually OT and/or trolls.

The message is what matters, and in this matter I support what RMS has said.

Most people of high intelligence are also a bit eccentric somewhere in their lives. It's when they're very smart but poor we call them crazy.

Calling RMS crazy is a little bit like calling Hawking disgusting because he isn't sexually attractive to most and lacks something because of the way he delivers his speeches.

More and more people are driven today to admire the rich, pretty looking, but stupid vs. the eccentric ones with the wisdom and intelligence. It's like high school all over again.

IMO, Ubuntu is headed in the wrong direction. While they had or have money from Shuttleworth and/or others, they should buy up some companies selling proprietary software and liberate it by making it FOSS, in areas where Linux is weak, one example of something lacking is a good video editor, and I've tried them all, they all feel like shit and some crash often. There are many other proprietary programs of different function(s) which they could benefit from by buying and liberating. But instead they've gone the way of Unity and now this so-called spyware issue.

Thankfully Distrowatch points us to many other choices, Mint being one of them, for those of us who have had enough of these changes in Ubuntu while feeling the developers, or those who micro manage them are out of touch.

So goodbye, Ubuntu. I'll miss you. Maybe we'll see another rich individual put their money behind a distro and launch some real advertising in the media to awaken the sleeping Windows users.

OT:

U.N. report reveals secret law enforcement techniques

"Point 201: Mentions a new covert communications technique using software defined high frequency radio receivers routed through the computer creating no logs, using no central server and extremely difficult for law enforcement to intercept."

It's not that I would expect anything else from someone who is a "community manager" (FOSS' modern-day equivalent to the appendix, in my opinion), but this "personal blog entry" is, of course, a steaming turd. I don't see RMS spreading FUD about Ubuntu, not at all. In fact, he makes it quite clear what they get, in his opinion at least, wrong, and why he sees it that way - and he leaves nothing about that "in doubt" or, in one way or anther, vague. Discrediting this kind of honest and up-front criticism as FUD, whilst he himself is weasling around the true motives (turn desktop users into dollar bills for Canonical's pockets) for the Amazon integration with all that hey-everybody-let's-disregard-that-and-feel-good sidetracking that's going on in that posting really makes me nauseous. "Better user experience", "creating desirable products", yaddah yaddah - yeah, fine and dandy, but trying to sell us this (in my opionion pretty crazy) add-on, that submits all the text I enter - be it to start a new program or open a document I stored - to a web service the users absolutely don't control, as an improvement for the good of the general public is not only ridiculous, but also demeaning to the intelligence of everyone who they expect to fall for the kind of "argument" Jono Bacon is trying to make on his blog. It's the FOSS-equivalent to the Ask.com toolbar, or Bonzy Buddy "form filling" browser-add on from days of yore, that Windows users get shoved down their collective throats if they miss unchecking a box in popular "freeware" installation wizards these days, and everyone with half a brain can see right through that.

First they totally ignore user wishes by foisting Unity on previously happy Ubuntu users, with a "for your own good" attitude. Thank goodness there is Linux Mint is all I can say about the desktop nonsense.

Now Ubuntu are integrating privacy-destroying searches. Then they have the temerity to criticize the guy who inspired the ecosystem they depend on (and profit from), when he points out that what is good for Canonical is not good for the privacy of their users.

What a tragedy. Ubuntu's focus on ease of use was such a great leap forward for Linux usability. Now they've lost the plot and forgot about their constituency, instead trying to drive more and more revenue with things the user's don't actually want.

It used to be, "In order for Microsoft to 'win', the customer must lose". You could extend that to "In order for Canonical to win, the customer must lose". You could then generalize that (as RMS does) to "In order for $COMPANY to win, the customer must lose". There are still some companies around that actually care about their employees and users (not just paying lip service to it), but that number is clearly decreasing. RMS is right to call them out for ignoring user desire for privacy (privacy should be the default, with effort to opt-in).

Jono has what seems a reasonable post. He never addresses RMS' assertion not that searches go to Amazon, but that your files and folders that are also searched also have metadata submitted to Canonical (and then presumably, portions go to Amazon). Jono never dismisses this citing stuff about "personal preference" instead. It would be nice if Canonical came out with a statement saying that they don't transfer information from your searched files and folders to Amazon, because they haven't yet (at least not in my reading of Jono's post). Until Canonical prove otherwise it appear that RMS is completely right in this issue.

The concept of being more useful to the consumer is fine. After all, we ALL buy things online. Most of us use the computer for ecommerce of some sort. a feature that makes it easier would be useful.

However, its not the what, but the how which make this pretty dangerous to your freedoms:

1. The user doesn't have a choice of the backend. They don't have the right to select the online purchase service of choice. This is going to make the Ubuntu experiance as one giant advertisement to get you to buy partner related shit-you-don't-need.

2. Targeted ads, at the operating system level. While targeted ads are good, as they reduced the obnoxious system destroying ads of 10 years ago, they do so by spying on the users habit, and compiling dossiers on users. These profiles are then bought and sold on the open market. They are the biggest gross violation of privacy that perhaps exists today.

At least a few specialize in identifying complainers, and critics(silencing them?), to companies.

Having this at the OS level, would make Ubuntu 13.04 potentially worse than MS Windows on the default install for privacy. This is certainly an entire OPERATING SYSTEM on par with the shovelware(removable) that comes with windows.

Instead of selling you an operating system, or selling you service and support on an opperating system. Ubuntu is now selling YOU to the advertising/PR Companies, and through them, anyone else who has the money to pay.

On the bright side, there are more GNU/Linux distro choices, and it should be easy to remove the spyware via apt.

"Now, some of you may share Richardâ(TM)s concerns over some aspects of this feature, and as I mentioned earlier, I am not here to convince you otherwise. Richard has every right to share his views on privacy, and who am I to tell him or you that he is/you are wrong?"

Back to Bacon:"These statements simply generate fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Ubuntu; a project that has a long history of bringing Free Software to millions of users around the world with an open community and governance."

2. You seem to believe he has every right to his views "who am I to tell him or you that he is/you are wrong?"

Then I fail to see how in the same breath you can assert his statement regarding being shunned for spying is childish and communicating FUD rather than the legitimate beliefs of RMS with which you agree he is entitled and with which you disagree.

To make matters worse you have resorted to an unproductive personal attack by asserting his remarks are "childish".

It IS spyware exactly how we've seen it in windows for ages. It's default-on which makes it no better than all the spyware that comes packaged with software. If it was default-off and asked at first boot/during install/whatever if it could be enabled I would have no issue.

He's right it is spyware. And that's fine. But what he needs to be is very very careful in making sure to be as fair as possible in his factual descriptions including all the minor differences so there aren't factual disputes that he is misrepresenting the situation.

I've been a big fan of the FSF since around 90/91 when Peter Norton's speech introduced me to them. RMS has done tremendous things for free software. But overly aggressive and unbalanced criticism doesn't help the causes he is advocating. If the person being critiqued believes that charges are (1) simply wrong on the facts and then (2) exaggerated in the effects they just ignore the criticism. One or the other can be effective, both just comes off as unhinged.

I rarely bother to log in, much less comment anymore, but I felt compelled to do so on this subject.

For context: I read the initial writeup and source article on RMS' take on Canonical's actions a few days ago here on Slashdot, as well as Mr. Bacon's response today. I've also been a happy, but increasingly disappointed Ubuntu user for a number of years now. I write this on my 10 year old laptop that hasn't had a working hard drive in 5 years (maybe 6?). This machine runs on a Kubuntu Fiesty Live CD, and my desktop dual boots Win7 and Ubuntu 12.04.

As a long-time Free Software enthusiast, I can tell you that RMS pisses me off nearly as often as I begrudgingly agree with him. I am hardly alone in that opinion of him.

Anyway, I've been less than thrilled with the Unbuntu-proper releases for the last couple of years now. Its just a simple case of the design team taking the distro in a direction that decreasingly suits my tastes, particularly on the desktop. I am not a fan of Unity. I begrudgingly used it on my desktop machine for about 2 years, and even after I got used to it, I still didn't like it. The default environment just, I dunno -- it pisses me off. And its gotten increasingly annoying to me in the last couple of releases. That alone is fine. I'm sure there are many users that like things better now. Aside from the desktop environment itself, Ubuntu distros have never failed me in terms of working well with my hardware, which is more than I can say for a couple of distros (which have probably caught up in the prevailing years for all I know.). My weird Wifi and graphics hardware just works. Thats freakin' sweet! My desktop machine currently runs Kubuntu 12.04 because I just got tired of the Unity crap. However I'm likewise not thrilled with KDE at the moment. Plasma and the file manager are only marginally less annoying to me. It pisses me off for similar, but different reasons. That's another story. I realize that I have other options within the Ubuntu ecosystem in regards to Desktop Environment, and I'm also quite aware I have options in switching distributions altogether. That isn't really my gripe.

For all that, and back on topic: RMS is totally right on this one. Yeah, he called out Ubuntu in a pretty blunt way, but it is what it is and RMS is famous for that same tone. That's sort-of Stallman's self-appointed job. It is on him to hold the highest ideal for Free Software and bark loudly when it seems something runs afoul. None of us are surprised. Mr. Bacon's retort (if you can call it that), is simply unsatisfactory because it doesn't really address the issue. If Mr. Bacon had simply accepted that the default behavior of the dash is unfavorable to the user and promised to have it reconsidered, if not changed, that would have been _something_. My personal view is that the Amazon thing should be opt-in, and even that isn't ideal, but I'd be willing to accept that and not get hung up on it.

RMS is many things, but childish and/or short-sighted are not the first words that come to my mind, even though I'm certainly not his biggest fan. I have a slightly looser requirements from my Linux distributions than those recommended by the FSF. For example, I don't really mind loading a binary blob driver from Nvidia so that I can actually use my graphics hardware. Ideologically, RMS is right, but I have shit to do NOW. We can fight the hardware/driver problem later.

At the end of the day, I will strongly consider moving from Ubuntu altogether because this is just the last straw for me. Not really for ideological reasons, but it just isn't usable for me anymore. I've never tried Mint, but enough commenters have spoken favorably of it for me to give it a go. I greatly appreciate what Canonical has done to try to bring Linux to the masses, as it were, but I feel that over time they have deviated from the spirit of what they originally set out to do. I can no longer support Canonical if they choose to continue along this path, and deeply feel that making 'sneaky' decisions like this one

Like you I too like (liked?) Ubuntu but I'm not going to be moving on from 12.04 due to the disagreeable features being add. Yes they can currently apparently be turned off but I don't want to be messing like that. Question is where to move to.

...or closed source LAN drivers and non-free qt? Oh, that's right... those aren't problems anymore. Contemplate the short term inconvenience and long term gains required to bring about that state of affairs. If you accept "kinda good enough today" that's all you'll ever have.

I glossed through Jono's response and it looks like a bunch of standard manipulative corporate PR-speak, he waffles a lot of marketing-speak like "the goal of the dash in Ubuntu has always been to provide a central place in which you can search and find things that are interesting and relavent to you; it is designed to be at the center of your computing experience blah blah blah" and makes vague insinuations about the 'accuracy' of RMS's statements, calling it FUD and using ad hominem attacks like "childish" --- but nowhere does he actually bother to deny the core claim - that personal local searches are sent to the servers online. In fact, he appears to be defending the idea of doing so, claiming that not liking this is merely a subjectively "different" "privacy" preference of individuals.

These days, he simply revises the GPL whenever a company (like Tivo) sends him into one of his rages.

Considering that there's only been three versions, and version one basically never saw the light of day, and version two was considered The GPL for over a quarter of a century, I think you're more than exaggerating. In fact, I think you're trolling.

Or maybe you're right, and RMS has only had one rage in the last thirty years--but then why say "one of his rages"?

Basically, your post seems to be logic-free. But hey, at least we don't have to worry about you revising any of your major contributions to the worl

When you grow up and realize what the real world is like, you'll quickly realize that information can in fact be owned, and that it's important for this to occur for numerous reasons which you apparently fail to grasp. No amount of pseudo-techno-philosophy you choose to fill your head with will change how the world works, nor will it stop you from going to jail if you suddenly decide something belongs to you which doesn't.

Thinking you're more enlightened than the rest of society despite an overwhelming maj

..and it'd have been so hard for Canonical to disable them by default in order not to annoy their target users? Did they really think that the people who'd choose Linux over Window or OS X on their desktop were the type to happily accept advertisements in their operating systems?

You're right though that extremists do come in all sizes, shapes, and colours. At the time the views of someone like Martin Luther King were pretty damn extreme.